❝ 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞. ❞
When Ricardo Esposito bursts through a door and finds a girl handcuffed on the floor, he decides to take her in and give her something she never had.
A fam...
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Life goes on; the world keeps turning. One's world may stop turning at some point, mine stopped for a whole decade, but when the time comes, you have to settle back in. No one allows you to choose the right time, nor does anyone stop and wait for you.
I believed that was why I could not let go of the unhealthy habit of burying myself in my room whenever something occurred that disrupted the already unsteady equilibrium in my life. In those moments, the world goes on, but my world stops, and I can decide for myself when the time has come to go on.
I reached for a small towel and wiped the water away from my bathroom mirror, revealing a blurry reflection of myself.
Five days had passed, and I was unsure if I was ready to forget and move on, but I had to do it. I had to wear something other than sweatpants, eat something and put on make-up and a smile because even if it would not be convincing, no one could say that I had not tried.
Not much has happened in the past few days, but some problems have solved themselves. Pietro told me that Zio Vincent sent Katarina to her mother's in Buenos Aires after what she had done. Perhaps she had not done anything wrong, she told me the truth, but the way she told me and the gloating on her part made me happy that I did not have to run into her again for a while.
Zio Vincent was still lurking around, but Ricardo's presence limited his options to harm me. Angelina Moretti was not bothering me anymore, and Henry and Mikhailov were over a thousand miles away.
I got dressed, a skirt and a long-sleeved white top as the weather was getting a bit cooler in the evening, and made my way to the dining room but encountered Ricardo, who was coming out of it.
"Quanti?"I heard him ask the person he was on the phone with, and I guessed it was in a bad context because he sighed when he received an answer to his question. When he noticed me, he said he would be there soon and hung up. (How many?)
"Where are you going?" I asked as I approached him. "Leandro just called me for dinner. Or am I late?"
The frown on his face that was there before turned into a smile when he saw me.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to join you tonight, Alessia. There has been an emergency."
"What happened?" It was always a fifty-fifty chance with this question. Either he would tell the truth or tell me not to worry.
This time it was the first. "There was a bomb attack at our main warehouse."
When he said that, I figured that his earlier question was related to the number of dead and injured, and his reaction told me that it was not a number that could be forgotten.
I wrapped my arms around his torso, knowing that he would spend the rest of his night dealing with dead bodies, telling families the news of the death of their sons, husbands and fathers. But he would also plan the counter-attack and accept that he would give the go-ahead to take away the sons, husbands and fathers of others.
